A Question: How Do You Feel About Space Exploration?

The Space Shuttle just passed over my home, with the signatory double-boom as it passed through the sound barrier on its way to landing at Kennedy Space Center. A quick click on my TV, and I was able to watch the landing live, as it happened.

I'm curious. How do members of this forum feel about our space program? Are you inspired by the accomplishments, or do you believe it to be a waste of money? There are of course many opinions between these two poles. For example, perhaps we should just focus on robot exploration only. Or, at the other extreme, perhaps we should go full bore to Mars, skipping the International Space Station.

I spent a week with my son at Space Camp in Huntsville.
It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. We were all
assigned TEAMS, and I think each team consisted of 5 kids and one
parent for each. We made and tested rockets, made space stations out
of small building materials, worked in a "clean" lab, rode on
gyroscopes, anti-gravity simulators, etc. They kept us busy from day
until night.

Our team had the "laziest" parents of all the teams. We pretty much
sat back and let the kids do the thinking and the work on all the
projects, only helping with the mundane tasks like untangling string,
etc. In contrast, some other teams had parents who wanted things
done the right way. [grin] Their rockets were always perfect,
the oral presentations consisted of them doing much of the talking,
and there was much conversation at their project tables, mostly
consisting of "That won't work Johnny...do it THIS way." Each team
had a representative from NASA observing the team throughout.

On the last day everyone gathered in an auditorium for awards. They
had a BEST TEAM award in every category. One by one, the awards were
given to the other teams. Just when our team was ready to confess
that we sucked at EVERYTHING, someone got up and announced something
about "Every once in a while we have a team that represents
everything we've tried to put forth in the Space Camp
experience. We can't give them the award for one category, because
they should have won the award for ALL categories. This year we had
such a team in Team #3, and we hereby award...blah blah." Well, five
little faces [not to mention 5 adult faces] had tears streaming down
their faces by this point], but we went up and accepted the award
with great pride. My son talked about that all the way home.

We've got kids with VERY creative ideas on everything from solar
panels to proper food-storage design. They're all itching for an
opportunity to realize their potential. I support the space program
100%.

While I regard space exploration as mandatory, there are nonetheless
superior and inferior ways of going about it. And our current space
program is WAAAY down toward the inferior end. It's a remarkable
exercise in how NOT to do space. The rules are:

1) Don't have any overall long range vision and build toward it
incrementally. Instead, do one-shot projects without followups.

2) Start by putting people into space rather than instruments. That
way, the projects accomplish less but cost orders of magnitude more.

3) Put primary emphasis on safety for those people, rather than on
accumulation of skill and knowledge. If someone is killed anyway,
halt the entire program for years.

4) Make publicity the top priority, so much so that actual learning,
or the development of workable techniques, is an accidental
afterthought. Stress perfection to the point where even an
extraordinary success rate will, by being imperfect, create the
public impression of bungling incompetence.

5) Apply the most critical technological advancements to secret
military and espionage programs, and don't transfer what's learned to
(nonexistent) long range civilian programs because the enemy will
deduce the capabilities of the military program.

6) Be halfassed. Develop the ability to reach the moon, and then
abandon that ability without doing anything on the moon. THEN build a
fleet of shuttles to service the space station, but cancel the space
station. THEN struggle with fragile, underpowered probes with complex
multi-slingshot flight paths because adequate probes cannot be
launched properly from the space station that was cancelled.

In essence, we've had politicians running an engineering project. A
blueprint for failure, as we've seen. All very discouraging.

I am all in favor of gathering knowledge about the universe beyond our
atmosphere. But I am leery of space operations with human crews. This
is not, as you might suppose, because I fear for the lives of the
crew, but because when you put a crew on board a spacecraft the entire
engineering task is skewed away from the optimum. Suddenly, you have
to devote a considerable proportion of your weight allowance to
life-support systems instead of to instruments. It makes no sense to
me.

I am also quite leery of the idea of space colonization. I liken it to
rebuilding the pyramids, but more grandiose and with less identifiable
benefit. It is one thing to imagine space colonization in a science
fiction story, quite another to finance it out of taxes.

However, when unmanned space probes send back pictures and data from
the far reaches of the solar system, I find the prospect of expanding
our knowledge in those areas thrilling. The Hubble has proved to be
worthwhile, although it has also proved to be a royal pain in the butt
to maintain.

I also agree with Flint that the management of NASA lacks all
long-term vision and has handcuffed itself to glitz and hoopla,
because of their perceived need to kowtow to politicians.

"... I'd also like to acknowledge Admiral Inman, head of the JPL
Oversight Committee at Cal Tech. He couldn't be here today, but I
talked to him by phone. His commitment to the team here is also
unwavering. And I thank him for that ..."

I am very interested in astronomy as a hobby and I support space
exploration, but I think we could learn a lot more if we approached it
differently. The Hubble telescope is a good example. If we used
the amount of money that we spend on shuttles to build better
telescopes we could discover a lot more without sending men into
space.

Also, I think we should take the same approach with deep space probes
that we do with computers, make them as small, fast, and powerful as
possible. We have the technology to build space probes not much
larger than a bullet, fueled by antimatter to go nearly the speed of
light, and capable of sending back valuable data and images as they
approach other solar systems, etc. For the cost of the shuttle
missions and failed Mars missions we could afford to send hundreds of
these out into space. For the Mars missions we only need to send a
probe similar to a radio-controlled model airplane, maybe 4' wingspan
maximum. It could land and take off, analyzing the surface in
different areas and sending back close-up aerial images from heights
of less than 100 feet above the surface.

Some of what Hawk proposes would be in full swing today, had NASA had
a long range vision more sensible than chasing today's political
whim. But I have my doubts about the antimatter. The latest I've seen
is that CERN managed to create a single antiproton and keep it alive
in a magnetic bottle for nearly 30 seconds. And it hasn't been NASA's
lack of direction that has somehow stymied particle research. The
cancelled supercollider, however, was also politics in action.

I agree that when it comes to space exploration, we'd have a hard
time doing worse while still doing anything at all.

While at Space Camp, we saw a life-sized simulation of Hubble
repair. I wouldn't agree that NASA folks are "chasing" politics.
The folks we met were eager to get on with things, but feared loss of
funding. If the taxpayers don't want the Space Program, NASA folds.
If politicians can persuade the taxpayers that the program is
important, progress is made. Of course my experiences were in the
education end. If NASA can't encourage more children to set their
goals on participation of space exploration, the entire experience
dies after the current generation. The kids with the creativity will
grow up to create virtual reality games.

Of course this is what makes it hard. Space exploration is expensive
however you go about it, and the return on investment, however
defined, won't be immediate and will always remain speculative. Any
big gains will only seem obvious *after* we make them, while further
exploration will *still* look like pie in the sky.

Private sector organizations need to see the clear likelihood of some
identifiable source of profit to put out that kind of money, and
right now it's not there. Which in turn makes the space program
subject to a fickle political will, which must be fanned by publicity
stunts that consume all the money. So doing it right assumes a
national public *commitment*. The space camp, and Space and Rocket
Center, here in Huntsville are kewl but effectively trivial. Imagine
what we could accomplish if we replaced self-esteem-building programs
in public education with space camps? Hell, we'd probably end up with
more self esteem that way as well!

I am all for space exploration. Agree with many of Flints
observations regarding the current state of NASA. Suggest the
following excellent sites for an inside and unbiased look at NASA and
space exploration:
NASA Watch

Hawk, the recent failed Mars missions were supposed to have been an
example of what you speak, better, faster, cheaper. It didn't work
too well. The two Deep Space 2 probes that failed were a
demonstration project for the minature probes you are talking about.
The failure reports indicate that they weren't adequately tested and
flat out weren't ready to fly.
I have read several of the failure reports (some over a hundred pages
long, pdf format) on the Mars Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and the
Deep Space 2 probes. Some of these reports can be found at the
following link:

I fear it is all a waste of time and money, best leave cash in the
hands of the tax payer rather than government they know best how to
spend it
if people want to fund their own private rockets all well and good,
why waste tax-payers money
there is no likelihood whatsoever that space exploration will benefit
mankind one iota, we will NEVER be able to travel further than Mars

If this is true, it's because of attitudes like yours, and NOT
because of anything resembling technological limitations.

Besides, space exploration does NOT mean people exploring space.
Instruments can do it much better. We have many options.

Finally, call me a glazed-eyed right-winger, but the space program
(lousy as it is) is about the last thing I'd cut. We could have whole
*human colonies* on Mars for the money we've spent paying people not
to work, and not to save for their old age, and to have unwanted
children. Do you really find this a preferable way to spend money you
aren't allowed to keep?

If this is true, it's because of attitudes like yours, and NOT
because of anything resembling technological limitations.

so much money has been wasted in space exploration its unbelievable,
this represent capital and investment that could have been made more
productively in other fields either by the stae of individuals, its
is all money down the toilet, its fanciful to expect that space
exploration will ever proceed any reasonable distance into space, the
technical diffiulties are unimaginable
i can envisage that the huge cost of space exploration could be a
massive money pit
lets pull the plug now and concentrate on realistic scientific
achievement here on earth

Who was that CEO who commented that it was fanciful to think the
world could ever find a use for more than 5 computers? How many
thought the horseless carriage was a silly fad? The list of howling
idiocies by those totally lacking in imagination is endless, and
endlessly entertaining.

OK, you may now return to your natural cave. It's fanciful to imagine
anyone would ever find either a method or a purpose for moving rocks
to build an artificial cave, isn't it?

I enjoy reading about space explaoration and things like that, but
i'm starting to wonder if it really is worth the money. If you think
about the third world countries where people are dying because they
CAN'T AFFORD food and madical supplies, and then you look at the
u.s.a or somewhere like that where they can just blow money on big
space shuttles, some of which dont even get very far before blowing
up, you'd think that we'd want to help the earth become a better
place before venturing forth, wouldn't you?